Meet an Old Friend at the Drug Store!

When I was growing up there was not a Walgreen's in our town. There was a Rexall Drug Store. When we went for serious shopping, we went to a bigger town. They had a Walgreen's Drug Store and it had a lunch counter. The fountain drinks were tasty and the food was a treat even though you might have had some of it at home,too. But back at home, I still remember going to the grocery store to get a six-pack of coke. The six-pack was just that......but, it was six-six ounce green bottles.Here was the best part. They cost five-cents per bottle with a two-cent bottle deposit because the bottles were glass. You could put them in the freezer and when the caps were removed, you only got some brown cola foam because the neck of the bottle was frozen solid. It would take several minutes before the frozen plug thawed enough that you could drink the coke and it was cold and a fun treat all at the same time.

Today, I went to the new Walgreen's near my house. I like having a Walgreen's that close. I like to buy the Russell Stover maple eggs at Easter, Halloween, Christmas and St. Valentine's Day. The new Walgreen's does not have a lunch counter, though. But, I wish that it did. There isn't many Rexall Stores like I remembered around anymore. So, over the years, things have changed from a business stand point. As I left the Walgreen's on my way to the grocery store, as I came around the side of Walgreen's to the curb-cut for the street, there sat my old friend. It just struck me---I was hungry again for a toasted tuna sandwich with lettuce and pickle and a big paper cone in a stainless steel cup holder filled with crushed ice and Coke! Oh, somethings change but I'm sure glad my old friend Coke has stayed the same--pretty much!

Parking Lot Carnival Is Back In Spite of LBJ's Construction

Looks beautiful but there was a 40 MPH wind blowing!

The Tea Cup Ride still shows up at Carnivals

Part of the main midway

A regional carnival and amusement company is back at a redefined Mall parking lot in spite of the LBJ Construction between Preston Road and North Dallas Tollway segment. The project stretches 11 plus miles from the Dallas High Five to the North South connection to I-35E.

The spot where the carnival usually sets up is covered in steel, pipe,wire,forms,gravel,chunks of torn up pavement and all the orange barrels that goes with such a project. The HOV lanes will be below grade level in the middle with the East West lanes at grade level. When done in 2015, one of the worse congested corridors of traffic will be well ahead of the traffic for the next several decades. When connected to the High Five on the East and the busy I-35E Corridor on the West, new flyways and HOV lanes up in the air along the right and left side of the main traffic lanes going South and North.

However, even with the Valley View Mall about to undergo redevelopment, in the shadows of the Galleria Mall that is less than three or four football fields down the block, the carnival draws a large crowd of families, especially on the weekends,.because of the toll way and  635 LBJ.

 

Looking Backward: New Discoveries

An old rail car going to a museum.



One of the carriage horses that pulls the flower laced carriages in downtown for the visitors and even locals that take the ride.



 

It will soon be time for the annual Dragon Boat Races in Las Colinas

 

 

Looking backwards will always turn up new discoveries. That's why photography really is "a moment in time" because sometimes months will pass before you see an image from an old shoot. Once the image falls behind the shutters, it's still that exact moment when you clicked the shutter. But, the excitement isn't lost. It's still just as exciting as if you had just shot the image only hours ago. Indexing images is very important and I don't always index a shoot like I should. So looking backwards will turn
up lost images. Here are a few examples of a three month period of lost indexes.

Churchill and Napoleon: A Lesson in Two Dogs--Well,Three

The White Rock Boat House c.1934

The French and the English are connected through bloodlines that bind them  for more than two thousand years through  tribes of  Kelt's. Rome tried to conquer England in what? 46 BC by building Roman alters over the Kelt's alters. The Kelt's worshiped at those alters with little difficulty. When the Romans pulled back to Rome, the Kelt's torn down the Roman alters and continued to worship at their own alters as they had done, during and after the Roman occupation. Rome thought they had conquered the Kelt's, but what they had really done was to enforce the power of worship on the Kelt's more than ever before. Had the Kelt's been a race of people, they would have conquered the Romans in battle, spirit and mind. Riding naked on horseback with their long blond hair flowing in the wind, they had prepared for the battle by having days of drunken orgies before riding off into battle. The Druids knew how to prepare their warriors and did so regularly.

During the reign of Napoleon, the little man knew his history well. He prepared and he lead with determination. His determination. Unlike the Kelt's warriors, he dressed impressively, but his determination was none-the-less much the same and he never lost that desire to be bigger in deeds than he was in statue, though some of his statues in bronze are pretty impressive in size.

Churchill, a tenured statesman and Prime Minister, had a statesman attitude and mindset. While Churchill had some American blood, he still was that Englishman's gentleman at nature and cigar's did, indeed, make the man, but it never changed his beliefs.

Growing up, our number 3 and number 4 dogs drew their names from their personalities. Mine was a German red dachshund  named Napoleon and my brothers had a  French brown and white basset hound  named Churchill. To this day, when I see either breed, I recall easily the fun we had with those dogs in names alone. People would just walk away shaking their heads after stopping to talk and asking their names. You could see the fake smiles melt away  as they realized the dogs and the brothers were not kidding. They just didn't know how to respond to such real but shockingly unexpected answers. Their minds were not ready for what they got in honest reply. That's the way my two brothers and I are today. We laugh about it. My nephew thinks I'm hard on his dad I know, but his dad, my youngest brother, just take the banter and quips in stride as we have always done.

So, don't you see, name you dogs with a distinction in modern history A name that is or can be enshrined. I once had a friend who's dad was a big burly man with a deep voice and had that distinction of a boss-- if you know what I mean. One Christmas, she got a little white puddle puppy. When it came time to name the dog, they--the family--named it "Cheers" When asking Guido what he thought of the name---he paused and said:" The neighbors already think I'm crazy. Can't you see them when I open the door and yell out,'Cheers!' ".



 

The First True Sign of Spring

The first true signs of Spring

The basket is about 80 feet in the air

The renewal of life in a trees bloom.

The flowering trees are beginning to bloom. I saw several that were fully in bloom and then I came across this stand that is just now in the initial stages of budding. All in all it just felt good to have the warmth of the sum on my light jacket and to see the opening buds nearly a month early. The other shot is of two men replacing the lights in a medium rise office building's sign on the side of the building. One guy was on the roof handing the front facings to the guy in the basket that had to screw them into the side panels that seemed to have gaskets to keep out the elements.I'm not so sure how that works in Texas Heat, especially when the sun beats down on the metal all day as the sign faces West.The gaskets or caulking has to be able to withstand that heat! The basket was about 80 feet in the air.

The Stand Off!

Click on the picture and the page will open up with all the details.

This image is listed with my agent for posters, framing or canvas wrap. I just love the scene!  Two years ago, while walking the stage route for the Children's Hospital, Nieman-Marcus Christmas Parade in downtown Dallas, these two units of the parade were already in place and were waiting for the parade start. It was something that you couldn't stage, it was just happening and those are the best shots anyway.

Fair Park (Part Two)

As seen on A&E Networks Shipping Wars

One one of the many Art Deco Sculptures at Fair Park

The new Top O'Texas Ride with the Texas Star in the background.

Yesterday, was a great day at Fair Park. The post from  Sunday  was images of the new Top O'Texas ride being built there. While at Winfrey Point later in the afternoon, the tower could be seen from the Point. That's about 8-10 miles from Fair Park and it stands as tall as the KERA tower that it is built next to.  That tower has towered over the landscape for a very long time. Now, it's going to have a neighbor!

This post will continue were yesterdays left off.

In the past, I did a shoot of the "Gas Monkey Garage" featured on A&E network. Dr. Moe, of Texas Storage Wars was at Fair Park yesterday.His gallary store is across town on Riverfront Blvd in the Design District. Hope to shoot over there in the not so distant future. While I couldn't get a shot of him from there,at Fair Park, I was able to get a shot of the Twisted House from the A&E show, "Shipping Wars". If you saw that episode, you will recall that Chris and his partner had hauled the house to within a mile of Fair Park from Portland,Me., when the load shifted. Well, the house is behind the Cotton Bowl currently at Fair Park and there is  a shot of that. Also, while there, I got the image of the famed art deco sculpture that is an amazing piece. And, the Tactical Services Division of the Dallas Police Department that houses the mounted unit and the K-9 unit was discovered along with the Pan American meeting rooms with the auction area at the state fair was also discovered. All in all, there was a lot of discoveries made at Fair Park yesterday.